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Our film critic's top picks

The Secret Cinema's Curator's Choice 2015 The Maas Building, 1325 N. Randolph St., 8 p.m. Friday. Admission $8. Culled "from the deepest depths of Secret Cinema's film vaults," it's the first program from Philadelphia's long-running series since

Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac in "A Most Violent Year," out on DVD.
Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac in "A Most Violent Year," out on DVD.Read moreATSUSHI NISHIJIMA / A24 Films

The Secret Cinema's Curator's Choice 2015

The Maas Building, 1325 N. Randolph St., 8 p.m. Friday. Admission $8

. Culled "from the deepest depths of Secret Cinema's film vaults," it's the first program from Philadelphia's long-running series since Jay Schwartz, its founder and self-described caretaker, was hospitalized in a bicycle accident last fall. A restored mid-19th-century brewery and trolley repair shop turned art and event space is the new venue. The show is packed with rarities both historic and hysterical, ranging from a 1909 D.W. Griffith short starring Mary Pickford to a promo film for British Invasion band Herman's Hermits, from a 1940s "stag" film to a Boris Karloff-narrated '60s doc about wild youth called "Today's Teens."

As always, Schwartz presents his films on a trusty 16 mm projector - no digital video stuff happening here. For more info: www.thesecretcinema.com

Dark Sparkler Amber Tamblyn Harper Perennial 128 pp., $19.99. Actress and poet Tamblyn combines her twin passions in this collection of free-verse portraits of tragedy-scarred actresses, both famous and forgotten. Tamblyn riffs (well, more than riffs - some of these poems are immersive) on sex goddesses Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, on doomed beauties Sharon Tate and Frances Farmer, on more contemporary star-crossed stars (Brittany Murphy, Rebecca Schaeffer). In "Susan Peters," Tamblyn tries out a sensuous ode to the MGM starlet whose career was cut short by a hunting accident that left her in a wheelchair. In "Jean Harlow," the poet addresses the 1930s screen siren's black-and-white world ("she smiles like the opening of a piano lid") and how "the beginning of Technicolor/meant the end of/but blood dried on the hospital sheets/will always be." (Not really - shouldn't there be a laundry service?)

Some of Tamblyn's poems come with illustrations by the likes of Adrian Tomine, Marilyn Manson, and David Lynch. The poet's father, Russ Tamblyn was a key cast member in Lynch's Twin Peaks, and several e-mail communiqués between "Papa" and daughter are published in the book's busy epilogue.

A Most Violent Year Lionsgate DVD and Blu-ray. Set in 1981 New York, in a winter marked by crime, grime, and unflattering jogging outfits, J.C. Chandor's Sydney Lumet-style drama stars Oscar Isaac as an enterprising, upright businessman trying to make a go of it while the competition (in the heating oil biz) and the D.A.'s office are bearing down. Jessica Chastain stands by her man - up to a point. But even she starts looking at him like maybe he's not man enough for the job. Beautifully acted, just shy of great. A compelling, suspenseful drama.